The Academic performance of teenagers
How does stress at home affect the academic performance of teenagers? According to Carroll (2019), stress is defined as a response to external pressures, events, or challenges. Carroll (2019) adds that stress is a feeling of physical or emotional tension, which results from scenarios or thoughts that make one nervous, angry, or frustrated. Therefore, stress is how a body reacts to a demand or challenge.
When stress occurs in short bursts, it can be positive in helping one avoid danger or attain certain goals. However, if stress becomes chronic, it will adversely impact a person’s quality of life.
It is vital to note that stress is a normal aspect of life. Nonetheless, even though everyone experiences stress at one point in their lives, how a person deals with the stress is what differentiates between those who spiral into a low quality of life and those who overcome their situations to live a high-quality life.
Like adults, teenagers experience stress. Kidwell and Dunham (2018) reveal that many teenagers experience more stress “when they perceive a situation as painful, difficult, or dangerous and they lack the resources to cope.”
Common stressors for teenagers include changes in their bodies, problems with their peers, school demands, death of a loved one, divorce/separation of parents, negative feelings about themselves, unsafe living conditions, family financial problems, having a high pressure to succeed, and moving/changing schools, among others. From these examples, it is clear that many stressors originate from the home environment.
Thus, the focus of research is on how the stress from home impacts teenagers’ academic performance.
Education is a crucial element in the development of teenagers. Teenagers are growing up in a transforming and constantly changing world. Things like conflict, climate change, migration, and technology are reshaping society at a fast rate. To keep up with the world’s changes, teenagers should have the ability to confront challenges and seize opportunities.
They require skills and education to secure productive work, become lifelong learners, make informed decisions, and engage others positively in society. Consequently, teenagers should have a high academic performance in school in order to enjoy these benefits accrued from education.
However, pertinent research implies that stress impacts a person’s cognitive functions. Marin et al. (2017) state that prolonged periods of stress may result in an overuse of mediators, which switch a body’s stress response on and off. The stress accumulation, referred to as ‘allostatic load,’ may negatively affect the brain.
A high allostatic load is tied to depressive disorders. Additionally, repeated exposure to stress has a cognitive cost. Marin et al. (2017) assert that cognitive flexibility, response inhibition, attention, and working memory tend to be impaired by stress.
These are all vital elements when it comes to learning. In this context, the project aims to research if poor academic performance of teenagers in school can be linked to stress from home. Since it has been deduced that the majority of stressors among teenagers originate from home, the paper will explore if these stressors affect the teenager’s learning ability. The results will shed insight into teenagers’ academic performance and provide a background for coming up with recommendations on how best teenagers can deal with stress.
References
Carroll, D. (2019). Health psychology: Stress, behavior, and disease. Routledge.
Kidwell, J., & Dunham, J. R. M. (2018). Parents and adolescents: Push and pull of change. In Stress and the Family (pp. 104-119). Routledge.
Marin, M. F., Lord, C., Andrews, J., Juster, R. P., Sindi, S., Arsenault-Lapierre, G., … & Lupien, S. J. (2017). Chronic stress, cognitive functioning, and mental health. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 96(4), 583-595.
